Doctors, Even Irresponsible Doctors, Regarded As Gods

John Ryan, a longtime critic of the pharmaceutical industry's penchant for peddling psychotropic drugs for unapproved uses -- including dispensing adult psychotropics to children -- responded to my column about the state's hesitancy to take action against the doctor who prescribed the apparently fatal cocktail of drugs for 12-year-old Denis Maltez. (John is a retired hardware and software engineer, currently an adjunct math professor living in Las Cruces, New Mexico.)

Your article points out a problem that
those of us in the anti-psycho/pharmaceutical-complex movement have.
People hold doctors in high esteem and are very deferent to them.
They are almost considered gods. People
are skeptical of criticism of any doctor.

The State of Florida rightly went after
the Rainbow Ranch and quickly suspended its license.Yet, as you stated, over-medication of psychotropic drugs killed
Deniz Maltez.For that, Dr. Kaplan is responsible, yet he continued to “treat“
800 children on the Medicaid program for about one month shy of three
years.

The State Medical Board could have suspended Dr. Kaplan’s medical
license, but all they did was suspend him from the Medicaid program.I don’t doubt that at some later date Dr. Kaplan will be
reinstated in the Medicaid program.

In the case of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley
in Massachusetts, Dr. Kayoko Kifuji of Tufts University Medical Center
temporarily had her license suspended, and
was given a leave of absence with pay. But after
the trials in which Rebecca’s mother and father were convicted of
second degree murder, and in which Dr. Kifuji was granted immunity from
prosecution for her testimony, Dr. Kifuji’s license
was reinstated, and she was reinstated to the TUMC staff. She is now practicing pediatric medicine again. Dr. Kifuji
prescribed a cocktail of psychotropics for Rebecca based on what the
girl’s mother told her.She only examined Rebecca once.

And that arrogant ass Dr. Kaplan has
the chutzpah to say that “nothing I did caused that boy’s death,” or
words to that effect. Doctors are indeed regarded as gods who
have come down from Mount Olympus.